Some Singapore and Malaysian residents were lucky to witness a rare astronomical phenomenon and the video of the incident went viral on social media on Friday, February 14. People said that they witnessed a rare astronomical phenomenon as they noticed a fireball fly through the sky.
A YouTube user Violet Crystal, posted the dashcam footage of a meteor streaking through the darkness and mentioned that the incident was captured about 5 am on Wednesday in Johor Bahru.
The viral video of the fireball sighting
It should be mentioned that the same footage was posted on a Facebook page called, All Singapore Stuff. After the post, the clip was viewed over 100,000 times and drew comments from Singaporeans. Some of the Facebook users who came across the video stated that they saw it from places including Loyang, Bartley and Hougang.
A Facebook user, Sky Tai wrote in a comment that "This is what I saw at Bartley this morning," while another user Izzat Asyraf Nahrawi wrote, "Saw this at Loyang at 5 am! Same time stamp! I thought Singapore was under attacked! [sic] Phew thank god it wasn't an hallucination [sic]."
Another social media user mentioned that the fireball was seen at around 6.40 am while adding that "I saw it too on 11th Feb! Facing East Coast direction," and another commenter mentioned that they had witnessed a similar incident on Tuesday, February 11.
Reports on astronomical phenomenon
It should be mentioned that as per the website of International Meteor Organization, there are four reports on such sightings which took place at around 5 am on Wednesday and all these reports were received from Singapore as well as Johor Bahru.
In terms of incoming asteroids or space rocks, most of these alien objects burn up before striking the surface and turns into dust after they enter the earth's atmosphere. As per the scientists, every day there are several meteorites which hit the atmosphere, but hardly any of them hit the earth's surface. However, this week similar fireball sightings were reported in Italy, UK, Canada and US. About the recent astronomical sighting, there were no confirmation or records from the US space agency NASA, which monitors all the nearby asteroids and the European Space Agency (ESA).
The Astronomy.SG group told Coconuts Singapore that the team was unaware of such sighting until recently and from the video they cannot confirm the nature of the astronomical object. In addition, the group also mentioned that "We do not have hard proof that it did hit the ground and there is no data from NASA and the ESA confirming it is a meteorite at this present moment. Our best guess is that it is a meteor that burned up before hitting land or a fragment of a larger meteorite that entered the atmosphere."
